Joshua Beckius | Murder | ABOUT THE CRIME: Joshua Beckius is serving 40 years in prison in the 1993 killing of a Boulder movie theater manager. Beckius was14 at the time. His attorney urged him to plead to second-degree murder rather than go to trial and face the possibility of felony murder and a life sentence. He took the deal, expecting a sentence of 16 to 20 years based on his age.

As he awaited trial for his role in the murder of a Denver teacher, 14-year-old Lorenzo Montoya pondered a deal that would shape the rest of his life.

Prosecutors had offered him a plea bargain: If he gave up the names of others involved in the New Year’s Day 2000 beating death of Emily Johnson at her home and agreed to testify against them, he could serve six years in the Youthful Offender System – a program geared toward rehabilitation.

If he didn’t, he could go to trial and face possible life in prison.

Against the advice of his mother, his lawyer and others, Montoya rejected the deal, insisting on his innocence. It proved a costly gamble when a jury found him guilty of felony murder.

His sentence: life without parole.

“I don’t think my son understood how bad his situation was,” says his mother, Mary Torres. “He didn’t think he was going to get life, because he was only 14 and they weren’t going to be as harsh with him.”

In another case, 16-year-old defendant Joshua Beckius initially resisted a plea bargain and proclaimed his innocence, only to change his mind under pressure from his lawyer and family and the fear of spending the rest of his life in prison. An arrest affidavit placed then-14-year-old Beckius at the scene of a 1993 robbery and murder in Boulder, although authorities suspected a 22-year- old as the triggerman.

Beckius pleaded to second-degree murder and got 40 years – even as investigators’ account of the crime began to unravel.

In Montoya’s case, his age, a relatively minor criminal history and authorities’ desire to identify others possibly involved in the killing contributed to the DA’s decision to offer him the deal, says prosecutor Curt Alfrey.

One 16-year-old suspect, Nicholas Martinez, was convicted and sentenced to life without parole, but prosecutors eventually had to drop charges against a second 16-year-old.

“We gave (Montoya) a very attractive offer, we thought,” Alfrey says. “But what he had to do, in his mind, was turn on his buddies and be a snitch. He decided he’d rather run the risk of spending life in prison rather than turn on those who participated in the homicide. It was a head-shaker for everyone.”

Montoya insisted on his innocence and claimed that the deal would force him to lie, recalls Kurt Metsger, one of Montoya’s attorneys. But Metsger also understood the sweeping power of the felony murder charge.

“They’re going to take who they can convict under the law,” he says. “They had the law on their side, and huge sympathy for the victim. They were very reasonable in what they were offering.”

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Photo of Emily Johnson, the Denver teacher beaten to death New Year’s Day 2000. Lorenzo Montoya is serving a life sentence without parole for being involved with the murder.

At trial, Montoya’s defense team claimed that he wasn’t part of the bloody attack in which assailants forced their way into the 29-year-old Johnson’s northwest Denver home, bludgeoned her repeatedly, left her to die in her backyard and drove away in her recently purchased Lexus.

Montoya’s lawyers argued that he’d been at his girlfriend’s home at the time of the crime in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2000 and disputed physical evidence – footprints and a jacket left at the scene and fingerprints in the stolen car – that prosecutors used to link him to the attack.

Torres says that even now, as Montoya turns 21 behind prison walls, her son won’t talk about the plea bargain or the reasons behind his decision.

Montoya turned down requests for an interview, but in a letter to The Pendulum Foundation, a juvenile justice advocacy group in Colorado Springs, he said he was too young at the time to grasp his legal situation.

“I think I should be a candidate for a case involving juvenile competency to stand trial because I really didn’t understand what was going on inside the court room,” he wrote. “I really didn’t understand what my public defenders were talking to me about at my trial.”

One study on juvenile competency has shown that nearly 20 percent of 14- to 15-year-olds are not competent to stand trial.

Metsger says that both young suspects and well-meaning parents often act out of ignorance of the legal system. For instance, police questioned Montoya with his mother’s permission, but Torres says she agreed – although she never signed a waiver – because she was told police were investigating a stolen car, and it never occurred to her that her son could be involved in a murder.

A judge eventually ruled that much of Montoya’s videotaped interrogation, in which he allegedly gave details of the attack, could not be admitted as evidence because it was carried out without his mother present.

Some juveniles need lawyers, not just parents, when police try to question them about serious crimes, Metsger says. He points out that even parents often don’t understand aspects of the law like felony murder.

“To put a parent in that position, saying everything will come out OK if you tell the truth – well, it doesn’t always come out OK,” says Metsger. “The parent is thinking their kid got sucked in by some 16-year-olds, that nothing can happen. But you know what? According to the law, he’s as guilty as the person killing the victim.”

Montoya made a choice that Alfrey says he sees adult defendants make all the time – roll the dice at trial rather than implicate alleged accomplices.

“He richly deserves the sentence he got,” Alfrey says. “He wasn’t dragged along. He was a very active participant. I have no second thoughts. He’s no less culpable than Nick or any of the others.”

Torres says that after her son went away to prison, the family imploded. Another adult son and daughter died in violent episodes, and she quit her job and drank heavily. More recently, Torres adds, she has pulled herself together, trained for a job in home care and tried to move forward – because Lorenzo needs her.

But she still regrets his decision to turn down the plea bargain.

“I’m angry he didn’t take it,” says Torres. “But he wasn’t an adult. He was 14.”

40 years instead of life

Joshua Beckius says his lawyer pressured him into taking a plea deal.

When Joshua Beckius’ court- appointed lawyer arrived at the Mountview Detention Center in March 1995, he brought along an arrest affidavit and the Boulder district attorney’s offer of a plea bargain.

Beckius, then 16, stood accused of a role in a robbery and shooting two years earlier that left 61-year-old movie theater manager Dayton James dead.

The attorney, Patrick Furman, encouraged his young client to plead to second-degree murder based on his reading of the affidavit and conversation with prosecutors, who wanted to deal – as was often the case – before any charges had been filed, Beckius says.

“I was blown away,” he recalls. “I told him, ‘I’m not guilty.’ He said, ‘Everything in (the affidavit) says you’re guilty.’ He told me to stop lying to him.”

Furman, an esteemed University of Colorado law professor, lobbied the boy’s circle of friends and relatives to urge him to take the plea bargain, they say.

The DA wielded formidable leverage.

If Beckius went to trial, he’d expose himself to a felony murder charge that would require prosecutors to prove only that he’d participated in the robbery in which James died. Witnesses cited in the affidavit placed Beckius at the scene.

On the other hand, if Beckius pleaded to second-degree murder, he’d face 16 to 48 years. At the plea hearing, Furman expressed disappointment that the Youthful Offender System couldn’t be an option because, at that time, it didn’t accept offenders with Class 2 felony convictions, which included second-degree murder. (The program expanded to include some such crimes in 1999.)

But the optimistic view held that because of Beckius’ age – 14 at the time of the crime – he’d likely get between 16 and 20 years and actually serve six to 10.

“I pondered it,” Beckius says. “When everybody around you says to take the deal, when you’ve got a lawyer who’s obviously not on your side, I started thinking that losing six to 10 years was nothing compared to a life sentence.”

He took the deal.

Scott Reese, then a young lawyer who’d studied under Furman at CU, served as co-counsel and a sounding board for Beckius.

“When I sat down with him on the day he took the plea, he was a terrified young man,” says Reese, who had represented Beckius on some juvenile matters. “He certainly did not have all the faith that what he was doing was exactly what he wanted to do.”

Although Reese doesn’t fault Furman’s advice, he questions the speed with which the plea bargain was pushed – with heavy reliance on an arrest affidavit later shown to contain significant flaws and inconsistencies that appeared to weaken the case against Beckius.

But to make the deal, Beckius admitted to an account of the crime that echoed the affidavit and described how he’d accompanied 22-year-old Chamroeun “Charlie” Pa and others to rob the night receipts from the manager at the Basemar Cinema Savers theaters.

But he continued to deny killing anyone. Today he says he was too high on methamphetamine to recall any role in the crime.

According to witness accounts, on the night of April 26, 1993, James answered a knock at the theater door and opened it to one or possibly two young men.

About 1 a.m., the night janitor arrived to find James dead, apparently of gunshot wounds. About $2,000 – everything but some rolls of quarters – was missing from the open safe.

The investigation centered on a group of kids seen in the area that night, some of whom claimed affiliation in a gang. But it was about two years before police made arrests in the case.

Beckius, pressed for a decision without a thorough defense investigation, reluctantly struck his plea bargain. He wrote letters to the victim’s two adult daughters, taking responsibility for his actions – an exercise often performed to demonstrate contrition in the hope of eliciting favor at sentencing.

But the judge detailed Beckius’ long juvenile history, acknowledged his rough childhood, noted his drug and alcohol abuse and pronounced him “an ineffective human being” who had shown no ability, or willingness, to learn from his mistakes.

A 40-year sentence, the judge explained, would essentially ensure that by the time he gets out he’ll pose little threat to the public.

But to the Beckius camp, the numbers didn’t add up.

Charlie Pa, who at 22 was widely believed to be the triggerman and ringleader, pleaded to the same charge as Beckius and got 48 years. Two other co-defendants – the 20-year-old alleged getaway driver and a 19-year-old man who acted as a lookout – got six years and 30 months, respectively.

“I knew I made a mistake the day I pled guilty,” says Beckius, now 27 and serving time at the Fremont Correctional Facility in Cañon City. “It was something I knew was wrong in my heart.”

By the time he was sentenced, the allegations in the arrest affidavit already had come into question with the discovery that one supposed witness who placed Beckius at the scene had been in jail at the time of the crime.

Even so, Furman counseled that the development made no difference in the larger plea-bargain picture.

Later, Beckius tried to withdraw his plea based on ineffective counsel, claiming that essentially he’d been pressured into the deal by a lawyer who never sufficiently challenged the flawed story line in the arrest affidavit.

“Can a kid – anyone – get scared enough to plead to a murder he didn’t do?” says Neil Silver, the lawyer who handled Beckius’ ineffective-counsel motion. “His attorney was sitting on him. Josh was convinced by his lawyer that he had no chance, that if he didn’t plead he’d spend the rest of his life in prison.”

The motion, as well as Beckius’ state and federal appeals, were denied. Furman declined to comment, saying that while the legal matters have been resolved, “it’s still a touchy one.”

Beckius will be eligible for parole in January 2013.

Daytona Ferry, one of Dayton James’ daughters, says she will attend Beckius’ parole hearings rather than simply write a letter registering her opposition to his release. Ferry, who now lives in Kansas, says she feels strongly that he should serve his entire sentence.

“I’m prejudiced to the situation,” she explains, “because it happened to my loved one. If I were on the other side of the fence, I may look at it different. But it goes back to, did anybody care about my dad that night? No.”

Beckius holds out little hope for clemency and would be in his mid-50s by the time of mandatory release.

“Some days I think there’s just no point, that this is all I’ve ever known,” he says. “Other days, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m going to walk out one day and live my life.”

Kevin Simpson has covered a wide variety of topics at The Denver Post while working as a sports writer, metro columnist and general assignment reporter with a focus on long-form pieces. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he arrived in Colorado in 1979 and spent five years covering sports at the Rocky Mountain News before joining The Post.